Foursquare | Cheryl Waller

Announcing The 2011 Crunchies Finalists And Tickets On Sale Now

January 5, 2012 By Erick Schonfeld Leave a Comment

The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.

For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro
NFC
OnLive
Siri
Tesla Flat Pack Battery

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline
Instagram
Google+
The New New Twitter
Path 2.0

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox
Fab
Gilt Groupe
Lot18
Warby Parker

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote
Flipboard
Pandora
Spotify
Square
TaskRabbit

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb
Foursquare
Grindr
RunKeeper
Uber

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay
Eventbrite At the Door
Fotopedia
GarageBand
Netflix
StumbleUpon

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee
Orchestra
Path 2.0
Pinterest
Quora

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github
Imgur
Instapaper
Onesheet
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana
Box
CloudFlare
Dropbox
Okta
Twilio

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo
Klarna
Peixe Urbano
Rovio
SoundCloud
Wonga

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy
Array Power
EcoATM
EcoMotors
Hara

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus
iPad 2
iPhone 4S
Kindle Fire
Nest

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3
Quora
Skyrim
Turntable.fm
Words With Friends

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water
Khan Academy
Kickstarter
Practice Fusion
Twitter

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway
Paul Graham
Reid Hoffman
Keith Rabois
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi (AngelList)
Kevin Rose

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Vinod Khosla
Aileen Lee
Yuri Milner
David Sze

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane)
Drew Houston (Dropbox)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Daniel Ek (Spotify)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Mark Pincus (Zynga)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codecademy
Fab
Nest
Pinterest
Turntable.fm

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox
Instagram
Gilt Groupe
Spotify
Square
Tumblr

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: AirBnb, Asana, birchbox, Blogging, Box, charity:water, cloudflare, codecademy, crunchies, djay, dropbox, ecoATM, EcoMotors, eventbrite, Events, Evernote, Fab, Facebook, Flipboard, Fotopedia, foursquare, Galaxy Nexus, garageband, gilt groupe, GitHub, gojee, Google, grindr, Imgur, instagram, instapaper, ipad, iphone 4s, kickstarter, kindle fire, Lot18, Lytro, modern warfare 3, Nest, Netflix, New New Twitter, NFC, okta, Onesheet, onlive, orchestra, pandora, Path 2.0, Pinterest, quora, rovio, RunKeeper, search engine optimization, SEO, siri, skyrim, Social Networking, soundcloud, spotify, square, tap tap tap, TaskRabbit, TC, techcrunch, tumblr, turntable.fm, Twilio, Twitter, uber, Warby Parker, Wonga, words with friends

Announcing The 2011 Crunchies Finalists And Tickets On Sale Now

January 5, 2012 By Erick Schonfeld Leave a Comment

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro
NFC
OnLive
Siri
Tesla Flat Pack Battery

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline
Instagram
Google+
The New New Twitter
Path 2.0

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox
Fab
Gilt Groupe
Lot18
Warby Parker

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote
Flipboard
Pandora
Spotify
Square
TaskRabbit

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb
Foursquare
Grindr
RunKeeper
Uber

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay
Eventbrite At the Door
Fotopedia
GarageBand
Netflix
StumbleUpon

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee
Orchestra
Path 2.0
Pinterest
Quora

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github
Imgur
Instapaper
Onesheet
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana
Box
CloudFlare
Dropbox
Okta
Twilio

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo
Klarna
Peixe Urbano
Rovio
SoundCloud
Wonga

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy
Array Power
EcoATM
EcoMotors
Hara

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus
iPad 2
iPhone 4S
Kindle Fire
Nest

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3
Quora
Skyrim
Turntable.fm
Words With Friends

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water
Khan Academy
Kickstarter
Practice Fusion
Twitter

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway
Paul Graham
Reid Hoffman
Keith Rabois
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi (AngelList)
Kevin Rose

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz
Matt Cohler
Vinod Khosla
Aileen Lee
Yuri Milner
David Sze

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane)
Drew Houston (Dropbox)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter)
Daniel Ek (Spotify)
Phil Libin (Evernote)
Mark Pincus (Zynga)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codecademy
Fab
Nest
Pinterest
Turntable.fm

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox
Instagram
Gilt Groupe
Spotify
Square
Tumblr

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

52 Pick-Up, or, Where I Went Wrong

November 5, 2011 By Jon Evans Leave a Comment

Happy anniversary to me: I’ve now been writing this here weekly column for exactly one year. In that time I have opined, prescribed, and predicted many things. And now, as part of my one-man crusade for greater opinion-journalism accountability, I’m going to take a moment to go back and look at what I got right … and where I went horribly, hilariously wrong.

With luck this will be an annual event. I mean, assuming Erick doesn’t take a look at this track record and decide to can me on the spot.

(cracks knuckles)

OK, then: without any further ado, and leaving out posts too recent to be judged or those that didn’t contain forward-looking statements, let’s see what I said over the last 52 weeks, and why…

November:

My very first post was How RIM’s PlayBook Could Have Succeeded, six months before RIM even released it. Fortunately for me, I was dead right: it was an unmitigated flop, at least in part for the reasons I cited.
In Dear Foursquare, Gowalla: Please Let’s Stop Pretending This Is Fun, I suggested they stop making check-ins a game and just offer users coupons instead. Foursquare has increasingly done just that; Gowalla has actually pivoted to become a travel guide.
Pretty good so far! But then I predicted the death of Bump. Boy, did I get that one wrong. Mostly because I wildly overestimated how fast widespread NFC adoption would occur. (And the lack of NFC in the iPhone 4S has probably pushed it back by another year.) But as I wrote in that post, I actually really like Bump; so if I was going to be wrong about anything, I’m glad it was this.
I then asked Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut? Short answer: no. Facebook has become to the social web what Microsoft is to the desktop: mindbogglingly gargantuan, relentlessly mediocre, and almost inescapable, I wrote, and so far I’ve been right.

December:

In Here Comes The Wetware, I predicted the rise of thought-controlled computing. Hasn’t happened yet, but that was more of a long-term call anyway.
Then I plaintively asked Google eBooks: Is That All There Is? and, indeed, so far Google’s eBookstore is nothing special and has had virtually no effect on the publishing world.
I called a bubble in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad App World. Is it? Maybe. But the fight for good talent has gotten even fiercer since. My most important prediction there is a long-term one; that even if this is a bubble, the subsequent boom as the smartphone revolution hits the developing world will ultimately dwarf it. We’ll see.
In The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be, I predicted that Android would conquer the developing world, and that tech there will start to evolve faster than it does here, thanks to their blank-slate advantage. Seems I was dead right about that first one; jury’s out on the second.

January:

Can Google Get Its Mojo Back? was my second-most-viewed piece ever. At the time, the suggestion that Google had grown seriously troubled was controversial. But Google’s own subsequent actions prove that they recognized they had a big problem, and they acted decisively: changed CEOs, reshuffled the executive ranks, launched their new Panda search algorithm to fight SEO spammers, closed swathes and swathes of stagnating projects, and reoriented much of what was left around Google+.
In When The Drones Come Marching In, and again in Droning On Towards A Date With Destiny?, I predicted that autonomous UAVs in the hands of criminals and terrorists were going to become a major problem. Well, that’s already begun, and it’s only going to get worse.

February:

In The End Of History, Part II, I took on Malcolm Gladwell and claimed that social media were, in fact, a really big deal in the Arab Spring and the like. It’s a view that more and more people seem to support these days.
In Quora vs. StackExchange: Why, Joel, Why? I suggested that while StackExchange’s expansion strategy was good, their tactics were flawed. I stand by that.
In Burning Chrome I lauded Google for their canny strategy of slowly and iteratively replacing the operating system with the browser. I’m happy to stand by that too.

March:

I returned to poor RIM with RIM Finally Sees The Light. Unfortunately, It’s An Onrushing Train – Or Is It? in which I suggested that maybe they would do something really subversive and disruptive, and fork Android. Got that one dead wrong … but that is exactly what Amazon did, for the Kindle Fire, which is already a success beyond PlayBook’s wildest revised dreams. Oh, RIM. You never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Then an embarrassment: I wrote The Walled Garden Has Won, in which I argue that Android is really just as controlled a platform as the iPhone, only to issue a subsequent mea culpa because I got a crucial fact wrong.
In How The Mainstream Media Is Failing Us With Its Nuclear Hysteria, I took the stance that the Fukushima disaster and associated nuclear terror was horrendously misreported and exploited by the world’s mainstream media, considering that nobody died there and it was part of a disaster that killed 20,000 people. The jury will be out on this one for a generation, but it’s worth noting that all the predictions of imminent doom turned out to be wrong.

April:

I took on Facebook again with Facebook Comments Epitomizes Everything I Hate About Facebook. In subsequent releases, they added almost all of the features I demanded; you don’t get a much better vote of confidence than that. Thanks, Facebook!

May:

My most-viewed piece, by far: Why The New Guy Can’t Code. It’s fair to say that many people agree that most technical interviews are deeply flawed. Some startups, eg Gild, are trying to disrupt this problem. I wish them the best.
In When Dinosaurs Ruled The Books, I lambasted the traditional publishing industry and called for the Netflix-ization of books. Just this week, that finally started to happen, thanks to Amazon.
I wrote about Bitcoin twice, in Make.Money.Slow: The Bitcoin Experiment and Is The World Crazy For Bitcoin, Or Has The Bitcoin World Gone Crazy? I supported the long-term importance of distributed virtual currencies, but was skeptical about Bitcoin itself. Events (so far) seem to have proved me right re the latter: we’ll see about the former.

June:

I went travelling through East Africa and North India and wrote a bunch of pieces from the road, including This Is Where The Magic Happens. No predictions there; it was straight reportage, not opinion; I’m just mentioning it here because I’m particularly proud of it.

July:

I wrote about encroaching surveillance states in: Intelligence Agencies Keep Getting Dumber and (in August) Welcome to the Panopticon. Sadly, I don’t yet seem to be wrong.
When Google Plus launched, I took a couple of swings in the Nymwars with Google Plus Has A Problem. Fear Not: I Have A Solution and “For Those Who Don’t Want To Believe”. Google has since about-faced and publicly committed to supporting pseudonyms. We’ll see whether they use my proposed solution. I’ve since said I Believe In Google Plus (though please don’t confuse “believe in” with “use”.) We’ll know this time next year whether I’m deluded.

September:

Finally, my most negatively received post, by some distance, was The Tragic Triumph Of The MBAs. I’ll concede that it was a broad-brush piece, and I could have conveyed my nuanced point with more precision. But I stand by its central thrust. I think business types are often unaware of, or at best underestimate, the profound suspicion and mistrust in which they are frequently — or even generally – held by techies, and they would do well to consider why that is.

Hmm. All things considered, I seem to have mostly done rather well this year. Put down that axe, Erick! Looks like I might just stick around.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, foursquare, Google, jon evans, research in motion, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, TC

Facebook Users Check in to Starbucks More Than Any Other Restaurant

August 24, 2011 By Todd Wasserman Leave a Comment

Starbucks is the eatery Facebook users check in to most, according to a report from the social networking giant.

With about 17,000 locations, Starbucks’s ubiquity no doubt works in its favor, but the list also shows that smaller players can upset industry titans. Case in point: Buffalo Wild Wings, which has around 700 outlets, was higher on the list than McDonald’s and its 32,000 or so global locations.

The list in full:

1. Starbucks
2. Buffalo Wild Wings
3. Chili’s
4. Applebee’s
5. McDonald’s
6. IHOP
7. Denny’s
8. Olive Garden
9. T.G.I. Friday’s
10. The Cheesecake Factory

Facebook stats show that when people check in, they let an average of 130 of their friends know, in a tacit recommendation. Facebook introduced Places almost exactly a year ago. The feature, a rival to checkin services like Foursquare, has been used as a popularity gauge before, but this is the first time Facebook has supplied the data directly. Facebook declined to say how many checkins each establishment received.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Piutus

More About: facebook, Facebook Places, foursquare, starbucks

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, Facebook, Facebook Places, foursquare, News, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, starbucks

Dunkin’ Donuts Launches Search for “President of Dunkin Nation” via Foursquare, Facebook Places

August 22, 2011 By Lauren Indvik Leave a Comment

If you missed your chance to become Dunkin’ Donuts’s ultimate coffee fan, you still have a chance to leverage your social media savvy for proper fanboy (or fangirl) recognition: From now until September 23, the food and beverage chain is giving customers who check in to U.S. Dunkin’ Donuts locations using Foursquare or Facebook Places a chance to be named the “President of Dunkin’ Nation.”

To enter, participants need to register their Facebook Places or Foursquare credentials on Dunkin’s Facebook Page. Fans are then invited to check in at Dunkin’ Donuts locations once per hour, up to 10 times per day.

The person with the most checkins each week is eligible to be named the President of Dunkin’ Nation for the week. (There will be five winners in total, for each of the five weeks.) A leaderboard on Dunkin’s Facebook Page will help them track their status in real-time.

Those whose checkin behaviors are less naturally competitive are also eligible to win a $25 gift card simply for checking in.

One concern: spam. Ten checkins at the same retail location in a single day is considered excessive by most users of location-based social networks, and while users can opt not to broadcast their checkins to their friend networks on Foursquare, the same option does not exist for Facebook Places users. Although there’s a chance that so many checkins will quickly alert participants’ friend networks to the promotions, there’s also a serious risk that participants will overwhelm their friends, thus losing a chunk of their followers and developing a less-than-savory association with Dunkin’s brand in the process.

Kevin Vine, interactive marketing manager in Dunkin’s brands division, admitted that he hadn’t considered the possibility of spam, but noted that participants using Foursquare could hide their checkins. At the end of the day, he says, it’s more important to open up the promotion to as many people as possible — and that means making it available to Facebook’s vast userbase in addition to Foursquare’s.

In speaking of goals for the campaign, Vine says the company would be pleased to see 100,000 people participate. He emphasized that the campaign is less about driving traffic to Dunkin’ Donuts locations than “celebrating and rewarding our dedicating fans who are already engaging in this kind of [checkin] behavior,” although the former is still important.

More About: dunkin donuts, Facebook Places, foursquare, MARKETING

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogging, dunkin donuts, Facebook, Facebook Places, foursquare, Marketing, News, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking

Klout Adds Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm & Tumblr

August 10, 2011 By Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

Klout Adds Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr

Klout just doubled the number of services it measures to determine your online influence, adding Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr to its scoring system.

The San Francisco-based startup, which is celebrating its three-year anniversary today, originally only took Twitter activity into consideration. Two years later, Klout added Facebook.

But in June, it began factoring in LinkedIn. And within the past month, it integrated Foursquare and YouTube to its algorithm.

“The networks we launched today were chosen to give the Klout score a more holistic view of influence,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable. “By adding blogging, photos and music to the interactions that we are already measuring we are moving closer to our goal of providing a complete picture of your influence.”

Klout will calculate your influence on these new networks based on the ways you drive actions among your online friends, followers or subscribers.

“On Last.fm the amount of activity a user or listener generates on their profile will almost certainly be a factor,” Fernandez said. “Tumblr is a great example where reblogs and love are clear signals of influence, and Instagram provides likes and comments.”

Klout also plans to add more services such as Google+: “We are eagerly anticipating them launching their API. As soon as they make the data available we will be ready to add it to the Klout score,” he said.

If you log onto Klout, you’ll notice your dashboard now features grayed-out icons for the five newly-integrated services. Click on the icons to have Klout figure in your activity on those services into your overall Klout score.

“Today is actually the three-year anniversary of Klout and we wanted to show off the power of the platform we have built here,” Fernandez said. “The fact that we have launched eight other services — with five today — in the last three months is a testament to the hard work our team has done building a platform that can easily ingest any signal of influence.”

SEE ALSO: Klout CEO Reveals Details About Foursquare Integration

Aside from adding more services in just a few months, Klout also recently unveiled a +K button that allows you to give other users a +K on topics you think they influence. And brands have started offering perks to people with high Klout scores.

Are you excited or bummed that Klout added Blogger, Flickr, Instagram, Last.fm and Tumblr?

More About: blogger, facebook, flickr, foursquare, instagram, klout, last fm, linkedin, tumblr, twitter, youtube

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: Blogger, Blogging, Facebook, flickr, foursquare, instagram, klout, last fm, linkedin, search engine optimization, SEO, social media, Social Networking, tumblr, Twitter, YouTube

MasterCard Rewards Facebook Places Checkins in New “Priceless” Campaign

August 1, 2011 By Todd Wasserman Leave a Comment

The original Yankee Stadium was demolished in 2010, but some of the seats have survived and are now being used in a Facebook Places campaign for MasterCard.

Twenty such seats will be scattered around New York City starting Monday. Fans who find the seats and scan a QR Code will be checked in to Facebook Places. Once a fan checks in, they make themselves eligible to win VIP tickets to a 2011 Yankee game in MasterCard’s exclusive Batter’s Eye Café.

The program will challenge fans to find the seats — which sport names like Doubleheader, Chin Music and Triple Play — around the city. The chairs will be placed at locations like Katz’s Deli, Murray’s Bagels, Junior’s and the New York Stock Exchange. The program runs all month.

The initiative, created by digital marketing agency R/GA, is part of the larger MasterCard Priceless New York program, which aims to differentiate MasterCard by offering consumers one-of-a-kind experiences. New York is the first city spotlighted in the MasterCard Priceless Cities program.

The partnership with Facebook Places also comes as rival American Express launched a program with Foursquare in June that lets card members get loyalty card-like credit when they check in.

More About: american express, Facebook Places, foursquare, mastercard, yankee stadium

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Filed Under: Facebook, search engine optimization, Social Networking Tagged With: american express, Blogging, Facebook, Facebook Places, foursquare, mastercard, News, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Networking, yankee stadium

Why Location-Based Gaming Is The Next Killer App [OPINION]

July 24, 2011 By Greg Steen Leave a Comment

This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

Greg Steen currently serves as a trendspotter for Moxie, discovering and assessing marketing implications for global trends. He has over five years experience in analyzing trends and creating strategic campaigns for brands such as Verizon Wireless, Marriott and the Alzheimer’s Association.

Capture the flag. Hide and seek. Marco Polo. These location-based games brought hours of fun to many of us as children. Then video games came along and suddenly the only location you played in was the living room. Now this shift is coming full circle as innovative mobile games are using geo-location, image recognition and augmented reality technologies to combine the real and virtual worlds.

Location-Based Games Are Already Starting to Emerge

For example, the popular Finnish iPhone game Shadow Cities, which recently made its debut in the U.S., uses the city of each player as a game board, allowing them to roam their neighborhood casting spells and taking over city blocks. Players can engage with others nearby by either teaming up or fighting over territory.

Angry Birds will soon include location-based features that give players access to new characters and content. Players will also be able to compete with one another on a unique leader board tied to each location. This feature will turn coffee shops, bars and apartment buildings into proving grounds for the next Angry Birds champion and could serve as a great ice breaker for players that compete in the same spot at the same time.

Paparazzi is an Android game that layers digital animation on top of the real world, a technology known as augmented reality. The game challenges players to take photos of a 3D character standing on a table. The character becomes agitated and will throw tea cups at the player. He’ll even jump onto the phone itself if given the chance.

Games such as these can be a great fit for marketers looking to connect with customers. Logos, buildings and products can all be incorporated into the gaming environment through barcode scanning, image recognition or GPS. Such games add more depth to social check-ins, a field where developers are still trying to figure out how to create worthwhile experiences. MyTown is an early example of how this can work. Players buy and sell the locations they check in at, much like Monopoly, and products are integrated through barcode scanning, which can unlock virtual goods and manufacturer promotions.

The Location-Based Gaming Market Is Poised for Growth

A confluence of smartphone adoption and interest in gaming has laid the foundation for mobile games to become a cultural touchstone and an extremely profitable industry. eMarketer estimates that 31% of mobile users have a smartphone and projects that 43% of mobile users will have one by 2015. That’s 101 million people. Interest in gaming has grown rapidly as well. According to Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal, 183 million Americans report playing a game for an hour a day. That’s more than half of the population.

All it will take is one breakout success and the market will explode with new players and more innovative games. Marketers should look for successful games to partner with rather than creating their own, since building a player base from scratch is difficult. But marketers would do well to think about how these integrations can enhance the gaming experience. Developers have been known to turn down partnership dollars if they fear the in-game additions won’t add something meaningful to the game.

A good example of a brand integration that improves the gaming experience is the Dreyer’s Fruit Bars campaign that is running in FarmVille. Players have the opportunity to plant Dreyer’s branded crops, which are more profitable than comparable plants and create the possibility of receiving recognition as a top grower. Dreyer’s is even bringing the promotion into the real world by selecting a few players to travel to Farmville, Virginia, and plant an actual fruit orchard for the community.

Conclusion

The market is primed for the right game to galvanize interest in experiences that combine the real and virtual worlds. Just as FarmVille put social gaming on the map and Angry Birds brought attention to mobile gaming in general, we could see a wave of smartphone owners flood the application markets looking for similar experiences. This will present a valuable opportunity to marketers that want to foster emotional connections with their audiences, so keep a close eye on new releases and brace yourself for the next big thing in mobile gaming.

More About: android, angry birds, farmville, gaming, location-based apps, Paparazzi, shadow cities

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Klout CEO Reveals Details About Foursquare Integration

July 14, 2011 By Brian Anthony Hernandez Leave a Comment

Klout CEO Joe Fernandez Reveals Details About Foursquare Integration

After Klout users learned this week that Foursquare activity would now affect Klout scores, many of them — particularly people who aren’t on Foursquare or who don’t regularly use the location-based service — were unsure about how the Foursquare integration would work.

That’s partly because the folks at Klout aren’t yet sure exactly how Foursquare will factor into the hush-hush Klout algorithm, which already considers Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to measure the online influence of social media users.

“We are still figuring this out,” Klout CEO Joe Fernandez told Mashable. “Obviously things like tips that turn into to-dos are interesting as is the ripple effect of a checkin through a network. In the next few weeks we’ll be testing and perfecting the algorithm.”

One thing Fernandez knows for certain, though, is Klout users’ scores will only go up once they add Foursquare to their Klout dashboards. “We use the network you are most influential on as the foundation for your score and then other networks are additive,” he said.

Fernandez added Foursquare to the scoring system because it has been a huge request from users and because “Foursquare is blowing up.”

For example, Foursquare recently teamed up with American Express to reward users with loyalty card-like credit when they check in. “The deals they are doing with AmEx and others show their impact is being felt wide by consumers and businesses,” he said.

Foursquare also just reached 10 million users, surpassed 500,000 merchant accounts, raised another $50 million and added targeted daily deals from LivingSocial, Gilt City, AT&T Interactive, BuyWithMe and Zozi.

“[Foursquare integration] is the start of an aggressive process from Klout to add more data sources and granularity to the Klout scores,” Fernandez said.

Does this mean we will see more services — maybe even Google+ — added to Klout’s scoring system? Only time will tell.

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